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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820867">The Lorax/Capture the Tower</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GestaltHammer/pseuds/GestaltHammer'>GestaltHammer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abduction, Capture the Tower, Creeper Gavin Free, Cute, Fluff, Friendship Is The Best Ship, Michael in a bear onesie, Minecraft, Pining, Team Nice Dynamite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:13:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GestaltHammer/pseuds/GestaltHammer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because Geoff is wonderful and perfect in every way, and Michael wants nothing more than to please him, doesn't mean Michael can't fuck with him every now and then. So he and Gavin stole the Tower of Pimps and fled to the forest. Surely Gavin - a literal creeper - is more dangerous than anything else they could stumble across in the forest. . . . Right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gavin Free &amp; Michael Jones, Michael Jones/Geoff Ramsey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Lorax/Capture the Tower</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Because this is an excerpt from a larger work that will likely never see the light of day, four quick things that need explanation:<br/>1) Michael has an obsession with/crush on Geoff that is not reciprocated.<br/>2) I use the term "tether." It's established in an earlier part that there's a sort of magical tether that determines where a creeper will respawn, fully healed after detonating. I'm sorry you will probably never read that part. It's cute and fucky.<br/>3) I mention Geoff having an SI unit. I know that SI units are already a thing (I thought it was funny to choose it for use). It stands for synthetic intelligence unit. Because he's in Halo armor, I basically gave him a Cortana (it's literally Burnie's disembodied voice, but again, you won't get to experience it much).<br/>4) It's only vaguely mentioned, but could still cause confusion: Gavin/Ray is actually the main pairing in the story as a whole. Ray just doesn't feature much in this part.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just because Geoff is wonderful and perfect in every way, and Michael wants nothing more than to please him, doesn't mean Michael can't fuck with him every now and then, especially when he tells Jack – <i>Jack</i> – that he's his favorite. Again. Which is why Michael and Gavin are tearing through the forest with Geoff’s most treasured possession – the Tower of Pimps – on their backs, half in Michael’s bag and half in Gavin’s.<br/>
<br/>
When Michael looks behind him and notices the trees are so thick, he can't see the city anymore, he grabs Gavin’s arm and makes him slow to a walk beside him. “Okay, okay, I think we're far enough,” pants Michael. “So, where's this portal?” He has to keep pulling Gavin along so they don't completely stop in place while he squirms about to pull the map out of his bag; once Geoff and Jack catch up with Ray and realize he doesn’t have the tower, they'll be on Michael’s and Gavin’s assess in a flash. There's no time to dawdle.<br/><br/>
“Umm.” Gavin frowns at the map he holds straight out in front of him, completely obscuring his view of the world ahead.<br/><br/>
Michael guides Gavin around a fallen branch, but Gavin still manages to trip over literally nothing after successfully navigating the obstacle. The only thing that prevents him from falling on his face is Michael’s steadfast grip which forces him to maintain his feet.<br/><br/>
“Oh! The compass!” Gavin chirps and plunges a hand into his pocket, or Michael assumes he reaches into a pocket – it's hard to tell with all the layers this guy wears – and retrieves the item he spoke of. But only a moment later he's scowling again and grumbling, “Ah, bollocks. I’m no good at maps, Michael,” as he hops on one leg, trying to shake the other free of a bramble of thorns while Michael drags him inexorably onward.<br/><br/>
“What's that supposed to mean?”<br/><br/>
“I – hmm. Stop!” Gavin yelps so sharply Michael thinks he might be hurt and quickly releases his wrist.<br/><br/>
Gavin steps out into a clearing and peers around. The area’s pretty, a little meadow full of wild flowers bisected by a shallow brook. The sun cuts through the thinner overhead boughs easily. <i>Nice place for a picnic</i>, Michael thinks, and sort of hates himself for the sheer domesticity of the thought. He's a goddamned warrior!<br/><br/>
“It should be here!” Gavin trills.<br/><br/>
“Are. You. Shitting me, Gavin?” Michael isn't mad. He isn't even surprised, really. But he still needs to yell at Gavin, on principle.<br/><br/>
Lowering the map, Gavin offers, “I can make a new one. I recognize this place. There are some caverns about with loads of lava.”<br/><br/>
“That'll take too long!”<br/><br/>
“Naaaaah. I got a bucket.”<br/><br/>
“That means absolutely nothing to me.”<br/><br/>
“C’mon, they're over here.” Gavin wanders off to Michael’s left, dragging the man behind him.<br/><br/>
The wood is much thicker where Gavin leads him. The trees are taller, but they look deader too, rotten, too much water, not enough sun. Michael can smell it. But the gloom isn't suffocating with the way Gavin frolics about, reassuring Michael that even though their course has altered, the plan is still “tippy tip tip toppers,” which can only mean the addition of this task has improved the plan significantly by his estimates, since his assessment of the original was just “top.”<br/><br/>
Gavin pauses at a pair of trees that have grown intertwined, all twisted up in each other. Michael has never seen trees grow like that, still two discernible entities but inextricably wound up together, so he stops to stare as well, in spite of their time constraints.<br/><br/>
Then Gavin’s solemn face cracks into a grin, and he points at the trees declaring, “Hey look, it's you ‘n’ me, if we were trees.”<br/><br/>
He looks delighted when Michael nods and agrees, “Aw, yeah, that one's me, and the annoying one that's all wrapped around it is you.”<br/><br/>
“It's a mutual wrapping, Michael.”<br/><br/>
“Yeah, but that one's definitely clingier,” Michael replies, indicating the Gavin tree.<br/><br/>
“Think we could do that?”<br/><br/>
“What? That? For the last time, I’m not having sex with you, Gavin.”<br/><br/>
“Trees can't have sex, Michael,” asserts Gavin, but immediately after he says it, his face screws up in doubt.<br/><br/>
“So, you mean literally just,” Michael gestures at the trees and their ridiculous contortions with a sharp jab, “that? The twisty hugging stuff?”<br/><br/>
Gavin nods, but it's clear his mind is elsewhere – probably imagining tree sex.<br/><br/>
“I mean, I guess, but you'd have to liquify our bones or some shit. And that’d kill us. It'd be the embrace of death.”<br/><br/>
“<i>Do trees have sex</i>?” asks Gavin abruptly.<br/><br/>
“Well, there was that movie where that tree fucks a girl.”<br/><br/>
“<i>Pocahontas</i>?”<br/><br/>
“Yeah, the infamous deleted scene where Grandmother Willow goes down on Nakoma. Disney's first R-rated movie.”<br/><br/>
Gavin grins.<br/><br/>
“C’mon, we're wasting time.” Michael nods in the direction they had been heading before getting distracted by the trees and moves along, trusting Gavin to follow suit. After a few steps, Michael hears the crunch of Gavin stomping along in the brush behind him.<br/><br/>
“It wasn't a proper tree, though,” Gavin observes. “In <i>Evil Dead</i>,” he clarifies. “It was a demon, really, not a tree. That isn't what I meant, anyway. I was asking about the process. Is that considered sex? Do bees pollinate trees or is that just flowers? I know they don't shag like humans.”<br/><br/>
“I don't know what you're talking about, Gavvers,” calls Michael over his shoulder. “I see trees out humpin' in the forest all the time. We ran past some just before that clearing.”<br/><br/>
“What -?” Gavin starts, then suddenly thinks better of it and quietly murmurs, “never mind.”<br/><br/>
“What?”<br/><br/>
“It’s stupid.”<br/><br/>
“So is pretty much everything that comes out of your mouth, and it's never stopped you before. It didn't stop you ten seconds ago.”<br/><br/>
Somehow that convinces him. “What if trees can talk?”<br/><br/>
“You should probably be more worried about if they can hear, at this point.”<br/><br/>
“What if that's what all the rustling of leaves is about?”<br/><br/>
“That's the wind, Gavin.”<br/><br/>
The crunching of Gavin’s footsteps comes to an abrupt halt, and Michael turns to see him looking utterly distraught.<br/><br/>
“That's tragic!” he exclaims.<br/><br/>
Michael shrugs and turns around to keep walking.<br/><br/>
“That's why more trees aren't cuddled up together. They don't get to choose when they talk. They have to wait for the wind! How are they supposed to learn who they love if they need the wind to bluster hard enough to give them a voice loud enough to be heard?”<br/><br/>
Michael can tell from the way Gavin’s voice is becoming more distant with every step he takes that Gavin isn't following him anymore. He's just standing there, waxing on about the tragedy that is trees.<br/><br/>
“And these forest trees, the wind never gets here, Michael. They never have voices. And the trees on the plains get all the wind they could ever ask for, but they're so isolated, Michael; they're so isolated. They can practically scream, but no one will ever hear them.”<br/><br/>
At first, he sounds so sincerely upset about the predicament these trees are in that Michael feels too bad to say anything mean, but then he remembers that he's a motherfucking warrior, oh, and that trees aren't actually sentient things. “Then they should have thought about that before they were born trees,” he yells skyward, then awaits the inevitable response of, “You're horrible.”<br/><br/>
But it doesn’t come.<br/><br/>
He feels a pang of guilt because, Jesus Christ, Gavin must be taking this imagined tree talking thing hard if he's too fixated on it to even chastise Michael for his insensitivity. Michael stops walking with a groan. He’s going to have to say something nice, isn’t he? “What about the Gavin and Michael trees? They found each other all right, and it's the deep forest here, boy.” Michael turns around, expecting to see Gavin standing a distance away but smiling because, damn, if those last two sentences don’t cheer him up then the dude’s terminally depressed.<br/><br/>
But Gavin’s nowhere to be seen.<br/><br/>
“Uuuhh, Gav?”<br/><br/>
Silence.<br/><br/>
Michael begins deftly picking his way back through the thick underbrush toward where he thinks he last saw Gavin, calling out for his friend as he goes, never receiving a response.<br/><br/>
He isn't too concerned about Gavin’s well-being. If Gavin gets in too much trouble, he can just detonate. He’ll spawn next to Geoff, who is sure to be irritable, and it'll ruin their plan to erect the tower in the Nether, but it's better than getting permanently injured or dying. It isn't until Michael gets his foot tangled in a thicket and tumbles to the ground, coming face to face (or rather, face-to-teeth) with a god's honest bear trap that he begins to consider his own well-being, which is a hell of a lot more precarious than Gavin’s. He scrambles backwards a few feet before realizing that he should really be looking where he's going. No one sets just one bear trap. He uses a tree to pull himself up, eyes trained carefully on the ground, and hollers a broken and damn embarrassing, “Gavin!”<br/><br/>
The silence isn't quite so thick as before. He can vaguely hear something, but it's so faint, and the squirrel romping through the overhead branches, loudly rustling the leaves isn't helping.<br/><br/>
“Oh my god. Shut up!” growls Michael, and he kicks the tree where he imagines its dick would be. Obviously, forest trees do fine without the wind. He strains his ears listening (if that's at all possible), and he thinks he hears Gavin’s voice, but it's distant and muffled like something is blocking the sound. Still, it gets louder as they play their impromptu game of forest Marco Polo. After some time, during which he avoids a total of four bear traps, Michael realizes that he can hear Gavin clearly enough to hold an actual conversation with him. “Where the hell are you?” Michael yells in frustration.<br/><br/>
“I’m in a hole, Michael!”<br/><br/>
“You’re a what?”<br/><br/>
“I’M <i>IN </i>A HOLE!” Gavin’s voice is still dull, even though Michael can tell he's screaming himself hoarse.<br/><br/>
“Why?”<br/><br/>
“I fell.”<br/><br/>
“Why!?”<br/><br/>
“I didn't mean to, you doughnut!”<br/><br/>
“WHY ARE YOU SO FAR OFF THE FUCKING TRAIL!?” Michael bellows.<br/><br/>
There's a pause as Gavin anticipates the response he's going to receive when he replies, “One of the trees called to me, Michael.”<br/><br/>
“GAVIN! ARE YOU- I’M GOING TO FUCKING MURDER YOU! THAT WAS A SQUIRREL! YOU FELL IN A HOLE BECAUSE YOU WERE CHASING A SQUIRREL LIKE SOME KIND OF ANIMAL!?!?”<br/><br/>
“No! It really spoke to me. In English, Michael.”<br/><br/>
“Yeah, okay, the fucking tree spoke to you in English.” Michael kicks at a pile of leaves, harmlessly springing yet another bear trap.<br/><br/>
“It did, though. Its voice was nice and deep. Sounded a bit like Jack, actually.”<br/><br/>
Michael freezes. Shit. Geoff and Jack are already here, and they're just toying with Michael and Gavin now.<br/><br/>
“’M beginning to think it was a trap, though.”<br/><br/>
“Ya think,” growls Michael, but he doesn’t yell it, so it's too quiet for Gavin to hear.<br/><br/>
“’Coz of the obsidian and glass and all,” continues Gavin.<br/><br/>
“What?” asks Michael. He couldn't have heard that right.<br/><br/>
“The hole,” Gavin replies. “It’s lined in obsidian, and a big ole block of glass dropped over the top of it after I fell in.”<br/><br/>
That isn't right. Geoff and Jack may have had time to dig a hole, but they never would have had enough time to mine the obsidian much less reinforce walls with it. And now that he thinks about it, while the prospect of catching Michael in a bear trap seems like something they'd find amusement in, setting literal bear traps with sharp teeth and strong mechanical jaws that could leave him permanently mutilated does seem a bit excessive, even for them, which suggests someone else is out here in these woods, or they were – recently too, judging by how shiny the traps are. Michael’s still not particularly concerned, or rather, he is, a bit, but he knows he shouldn't be. These sorts of traps are largely precautionary; it's not like they're being actively hunted, and even if they were, Michael has his giant ass diamond sword to protect him.<br/><br/>
He continues to close the distance between Gavin and himself as Gavin babbles on, mostly to himself now because Michael is listening only to his voice to navigate by, not his words, too preoccupied in his own thoughts, trying to convince his heart to slow because whoever is out here is just protecting themselves from dangerous animals and mobs, momentarily forgetting that, for as friendly as he is, to the rest of the world, his companion is a dangerous mob.<br/><br/>
<i>No one is after you</i>, he thinks furiously. <i>No one is after you. No one is after you. No one is – Then who the fuck was talking to Gavin?</i><br/><br/>
The thought occurs to him just a second too late as his legs are ripped out from beneath him, and his world violently inverts. His heavy backpack comes up to thwump him in the back of the head before slipping over his arms and landing in the grass with a thud, and his sword slips out of its sheath and tumbles to the ground.<br/><br/>
The whole process is very disorienting, and only when Michael is eventually able to gather his thoughts and become cognizant of the fact that he is now dangling upside down by one leg does he realize that both he and Gavin are screaming bloody murder, Gavin presumably only doing so because Michael is.<br/><br/>
Michael falls quiet and waits for Gavin to do the same, which he does after about 45 seconds. They remain in silence until Gavin meekly squeaks, “Michael?”<br/><br/>
Michael follows the sound of Gavin’s voice with his gaze and notices he can see a mass of black in the ground that he assumes is the obsidian hole from up here, but it's too deep for him to see Gavin in it. “Yeah, buddy?” He tries to say it loudly, but it sounds sort of strangled.<br/><br/>
Gavin apparently hears him anyway because he almost immediately asks, “What just happened?”<br/><br/>
“I've been boobied, Gav.”<br/><br/>
“Oh. So, you're . . .”<br/><br/>
“Yeah, I'm - I'm pretty stuck. Hold on.” He wriggles about, stretches as far as he can, reaching for his sword on the ground beneath him. His fingers don't even come close to grazing it. Curse his portability. “Yeah, no, I'm . . . I can't get out of this thing.”<br/><br/>
“Is it that rope trap?”<br/><br/>
“You knew about it?”<br/><br/>
“Yeah, but I didn't know you were dumb enough to walk into it, you pleb.”<br/><br/>
“You fell in a hole because you thought a tree was talking to you.”<br/><br/>
“Not my best moment,” admits Gavin. “Should I go detonate, then?”<br/><br/>
“No!”<br/><br/>
“But Michael -!”<br/><br/>
“You're not leaving me here, Gavin. Who knows who set these traps? Definitely a crazy person!”<br/><br/>
“I wouldn't be leaving you, Michael. I'd just be temporarily . . .”<br/><br/>
“Yeah?”<br/><br/>
“Um . . .”<br/><br/>
“Uh-huh, what's that, Gavin? What would you be temporarily doing?”<br/><br/>
“I'd come right back! Fat lot of good I’m doing you in this hole. And my leg really hurts, Michael. I think it's broken.”<br/><br/>
“It's not broken, you baby.”<br/><br/>
“But I can't really move it and . . .” There's a short pause. “This thing is like . . . What the bloody hell is this? Is that . . . ?” A slightly longer pause, then, a horrified scream of, “Fucking Christ, Michael! Oh, OH MY GODS, MICHAEL!”<br/><br/>
“What?”<br/><br/>
“CHRIST!”<br/><br/>
“WHAT!?”<br/><br/>
“IT’S STICKING OUT OF MY DAMNED LEG! I can see my leg bone, Michael!” howls Gavin.<br/><br/>
“Why are you just now telling me this?”<br/><br/>
“I didn't notice it that much before, but now it's all I can think about, Michael! It's just this and the bloody hole!”<br/><br/>
“How did you not notice???”<br/><br/>
“I was in shock or something, wasn’t I?? It hurts so bad, Michael! I've got to detonate!”<br/><br/>
“Don’t you dare!”<br/><br/>
“I'm sorry, Michael. I'll come back for you. I promise!”<br/><br/>
“Don't you do it, you piece of shit shithead fuck!” Michael swears, thrashing, trying to break free even as he watches flashing lights emanate from the hole.<br/><br/>
The obsidian contains the blast well, but it does send the force that it can't absorb upward, shattering the glass that had dimmed Gavin’s voice and shaking the tree from which Michael is suspended.<br/><br/>
Michael releases a string of colorful obscenities at the empty hole before lapsing into silence and crossing his arms over his chest.<br/><br/>
It's just as well. Even if Michael had managed to get down and pull Gavin out of the hole, he would have had to detonate anyway; Michael couldn't carry Gavin all the way to the caverns or out of the woods, or whatever their plan would have been. Well, he could have, if it had just been Gavin, but between Gavin, four blocks of gold, two diamond pickaxes, and Michael’s sword, it would have been too much. The only difference it really makes is that now they will have to mine more gold to replace half the tower, and Michael has time to be lonely and linger on just how uncomfortable dangling upside down from one leg is.<br/><br/>
His ankle is extremely sore from bearing all of his weight in this manner. The fact that it's just the one leg ensnared might be the worst part because he isn't sure what to do with his other leg. There is absolutely no position in which he can put that leg that is even remotely comfortable; keeping it elevated requires a weird amount of effort, and just letting gravity do its thing is even worse because his hips aren't nearly flexible enough for that range of motion. And then there's his head, painfully pounding in synchronicity with his pulse; he can't be sure if it's because he was hit in the head with two blocks of gold and a pickaxe or if it's just the pooling of blood, but his thoughts are fuzzy. It's funny that he finds it so hard to think with all the blood rushing to his brain; his penis seems think just fine when the blood's rushing there.<br/><br/>
He tries to concentrate on breathing, since that is becoming increasingly difficult too. He closes his eyes, focuses on filling his lungs, presses to ignore the ever louder rushing sound in his ears, and –<br/><br/>
“Michael?” Sharp and perturbed, clear with the pane of glass no longer dampening it, the sound of Gavin’s voice cuts through the waves.<br/><br/>
Michael peels open an eye, expecting to see Gavin accompanied by Geoff and maybe Ray and Jack, certain he passed out because it feels like it's been mere seconds since Gavin abandoned him. But no one's there. It's just him and the hole.<br/><br/>
“Michael!” Gavin’s voice screeches in shrill panic. “Michael, I’m still in the hole, Michael! I've respawned in the hole! And now I'm stood on broken glass, Michael!”<br/><br/>
There's a rustling in the nearby bushes. Michael and Gavin have the same first instinct and both yell at it to shut up before a tall man in a kilt leaps out and bounds across the short distance to stand over the obsidian hole. The man pumps two fists victoriously in the air and Gavin emits this long, ghastly high-pitched wailing noise that Michael suspects might be a long string of words because he can almost hear his name in it about 15 times.<br/><br/>
“It works!” the kilted man declares, proudly putting his hands on his hips.<br/><br/>
“Oh, Michael! OHHHHHHH, MICHAEL! He's not wearing any pants, Michael!”<br/><br/>
Michael used to like that Gavin says his name a lot; it's a great name after all, the greatest even. His second favorite person in the world is named Michael. Now he wishes Gavin would give it a rest for a few minutes, especially if he's going to be using that tone of voice.<br/><br/>
“I can see that, Gavin,” Michael grinds out between his gritted teeth.<br/><br/>
“No! Pants, Michael, pants!” cries Gavin, and Michael can tell there's been some sort of miscommunication, but Gavin’s repetition of the word <i>pants </i>really doesn’t clarify much. “Christ, it looks like that monster at the school in <i>Silent Hill</i>!”<br/><br/>
The man kneels down and asks, “Pyramid Head?”<br/><br/>
“No, the game, not the stupid, bloody movie.”<br/><br/>
“Ah. Split Head.”<br/><br/>
“Gav, are you talking ‘bout . . . you talkin' ‘bout his penis?” Michael splutters.<br/><br/>
“He is.” The man rises and strolls toward Michael. “And I am flattered.”<br/><br/>
Oh. No<i> under</i>pants. “Congrats, dude.”<br/><br/>
“Don’t congratulate him, Michael. It's awful! I’d pity him if he wasn't a right little prick.”<br/><br/>
“You talk an awful lot for a guy in a hole,” the man calls over his shoulder.<br/><br/>
“Yeah, well, you’re horribly condescending for a . . . A mincey skirt-wearing smegpot!”<br/><br/>
“This -“<br/><br/>
“With no pants!”<br/><br/>
“That's how kilts are meant to be worn.” The man speaks slowly and evenly; his voice is kind, far kinder than his actions would indicate he is. And Gavin was right; he does sort of sound like Jack. Michael hates him immediately. Then the man finally gets a good look at Michael, and his face (which is also far kinder than his actions) falls. “Well, you aren't a talking bear at all,” he mopes.<br/><br/>
“Bears can't talk,” croaks Michael.<br/><br/>
“I didn't think creepers could either until today. I almost let him go after I caught you. I thought, ‘there's no way a creeper just sits in a hole, waiting for his talking bear friend to find him. A creeper would’ve blown by now! I just caught some weirdo in a creeper costume.’ But then he started talking about detonation.” The man kneels and begins picking through Michael's bag.<br/><br/>
“Goddammit, Gavin! You fucking killed us!”<br/><br/>
“Killed you? Oh, no. I would never kill a human,” the man chuckles good naturedly. Then adds, “intentionally or without good reason,” after a beat.<br/><br/>
“I'm half human,” calls Gavin desperately. “Does that count for nothing?”<br/><br/>
“No, that means he'll only half-kill you, dumbass.”<br/><br/>
“That's fascinating, actually.”<br/><br/>
“I was going for sympathetic, not fascinating.”<br/><br/>
The man ignores Gavin, looks unimpressed with the pickaxe and tosses it to the side, but leaves the gold in the bag and shoulders it before taking up Michael’s sword. “This is all you have?”<br/><br/>
“We had more, but the idiot blew it up.”<br/><br/>
Gavin squawks to let Michael know he takes exception to that.<br/><br/>
“Oh, well.” The man stands and paces over to the trunk of the tree from which Michael is suspended, and with a swing of Michael’s sword, cleaves the end of the rope trap that's fastened to the tree. “You're free to go.”<br/><br/>
Michael hits the ground hard and can't help but groan as he collects himself. When he feels like he can stand, albeit favoring one leg, though neither are particularly happy with him right now, he finds the man standing between him and the hole, fumbling with a pouch full of red powder.<br/><br/>
Gavin is blubbering, “Michael? Where are you, Michael? Don't leave me with this bloody mentalist!”<br/><br/>
“Ummm,” Michael starts, his voice weaker than he'd prefer.<br/><br/>
The man looks up at him. “Yes?”<br/><br/>
“So, I'll . . . I'll just get my creeper and be on my way.” Michael takes a step forward, but the man is quick to raise his sword, Michael's former sword, no loyalty amongst inanimate objects.<br/><br/>
“<i>Your </i>creeper, huh?” He glances quickly over his shoulder, down into the obsidian depths then returns his gaze to Michael. “I don't see your name on it, <i>Michael</i>,” he says petulantly.<br/><br/>
“What?”<br/><br/>
“I put my name on everything that's important to me. That way, if I ever get into a property dispute, like this, I can say, ‘see, here's my name; it's clearly mine – why else would it have my name on it?’”<br/><br/>
“Yeah? That what happened to your underwear? A, uh, ‘property dispute’?”<br/><br/>
Michael can't tell if Gavin is hysterically laughing or crying, or if it's some combination of both. Probably both.<br/><br/>
The man chuckles, but then his face turns abruptly grave, and he darkly utters a booming, “No!” that makes Michael jump.<br/><br/>
“Calm down. Jesus Christ. Look, sorry I didn't put my <i>name </i>on my friend, but you saw us walking together.”<br/><br/>
“And now he's in my hole. See? Here's my name.” The man points at one of the obsidian bricks.<br/><br/>
Michael peers at the block the man is gesturing to. From this distance, he can't quite read what it says, but there's definitely something written there. Michael would get closer to investigate, but he doesn’t want to get stabbed or pushed in the hole. “Well, that's just the one block,” argues Michael, grasping for any sort of loophole in the man’s own logic to convince him to just let Gavin go.<br/><br/>
“No, I've written it on all of the blocks. I'd write it on the air inside, if I could. I've written it on that tree, too, so don't even think about it touching it,” he orders.<br/><br/>
Michael looks at the rope trap tree, and indeed notices the word “RYAN” written in crayon on its trunk.<br/><br/>
“Huh,” is all Michael can think to say. “So I guess you're –“<br/><br/>
The man's face softens instantly. “Hello, I'm Ryan, and I like to put things in holes.”<br/><br/>
Gavin whimpers pathetically.<br/><br/>
“What kinds of things?” asks Michael suspiciously, trying to assess the actual threat level of this guy. He is more than ready to go fetch Geoff and have him deal with this backwoods freak, but Michael can't leave Gavin behind if Ryan is too much of an immediate danger.<br/><br/>
“Oh, all sorts of things. Plants; rodents; mobs; shoes; birds, they don’t like staying in there much; like, little – little marbles; soaps; sheep; my mother once, gods bless her soul.” He says the last part with a reverent nod and points to the sky, apparently oblivious to Gavin’s increasingly panicked squeaks. “Oh! And cattle, if I can find the bastards.”<br/><br/>
Michael stares in silence for some time, unsure what he's supposed to make of Ryan’s response, then ventures, “And, um, uh, your p- your penis, too, I imagine.”<br/><br/>
“Oh, yes, that as well. All the time. I am a man, Michael.”<br/><br/>
Michael has no earthly idea whether Ryan’s being serious. He's smiling, but it's this eccentric, off-balanced sort of absent-minded smile. Either way, it doesn’t inspire much confidence. But really, Michael’s at a loss of what to do. This guy's nuttier than Ray accuses Geoff of being, but he also has a sword whereas Michael’s defenseless, except for his fists, but blade beats knuckles every goddamned time (unless Gavin’s the one wielding the blade, of course).<br/><br/>
Michael raises his hands in surrender and starts to back away.<br/><br/>
“There's a good bear.”<br/><br/>
“Michael!?” Gavin squeaks.<br/><br/>
“I don't know what the fuck you want me to do, Gav. He's got my sword. I'm unarmed,” explains Michael pathetically. “I’m really . . .” he trails off into a sigh because how hollow would an apology sound right now?<br/><br/>
Just as he turns to leave, he hears Gavin’s voice, low, no longer masking his genuine fear with over the top dramatics, and so quiet that Michael barely catches it. “Don’t leave me, Michael.”<br/><br/>
Ryan could have stabbed that sword straight through Michael’s back, and it wouldn't have hurt more than hearing Gavin say those words in that broken voice (that's an exaggeration: it would have been infinitely more excruciating, that's why Michael doesn’t immediately turn around and take Ryan head on, then and there). He drops his eyes to the ground in shame, but it's there that he finds salvation – the pickaxe lies exactly where Ryan discarded it, at Michael’s feet.<br/><br/>
He retrieves it from the ground, feels the heft of it in his hands. It's not an ideal weapon, but it's better than leaving Gavin with this man. Michael spins on Ryan, raising the pickaxe, holding it like he would hold a baseball bat. Ryan isn't looking at him; he's sifting through the contents of a burlap sack, so Michael aggressively calls out, “Hey, asshole!”<br/><br/>
Ryan sighs, not bothering to look up from his work. “Yes, little bear?”<br/><br/>
Michael takes several fast steps, closing the distance between them before Ryan has time to turn around. “I'm not leaving without my fucking creeper.”<br/><br/>
“You’re my boy, Michael!” calls Gavin.<br/><br/>
As Ryan turns to look at Michael, he swings the axe and clocks Ryan in the head with the flat side of the instrument. The tall man collapses in a heap.<br/><br/>
Well, that was anticlimactic. He probably could have just used a rock.<br/><br/>
“Is he dead?” asks Gavin’s voice.<br/><br/>
Michael nudges Ryan’s unconscious form with his foot. “Nah, just knocked out. You good, Gavvers?”<br/><br/>
“’M all right. Just get me out of here, Michael!”<br/><br/>
Michael drops his pickaxe and limps over to the hole. When he peers down into it, Gavin’s face lights up, and he coos “Michael!”<br/><br/>
The hole is significantly deeper than Michael anticipated – too deep for him to just reach down and pull his friend out - and narrow enough that if Gavin were to extend both arms laterally he could almost touch either side, but not quite.<br/><br/>
“Maybe if you grab on to the pickaxe, I can pull you up.”<br/><br/>
“Quickly then. I hate it in here.”<br/><br/>
“You're so damn impatient,” Michael mumbles as he backtracks to grab the axe and freezes in horror.<br/><br/>
Ryan’s gone. And he absconded with the bags.<br/><br/>
“That bitch took . . . He took <i>fucking everything</i>!”<br/><br/>
“Well, how'm I –“<br/><br/>
“I don't. Know. Gavin. I guess I have to go back to town and grab a ladder.”<br/><br/>
“And leave me in here for when that psycho returns? Absolutely not.”<br/><br/>
“Well, what am I supposed to do, Gavin!?”<br/><br/>
“Stop trying to abandon me all the time!”<br/><br/>
“You tried to abandon me first!”<br/><br/>
“That was different! That mingy little git doesn't think you’re <i>fascinating</i>.”<br/><br/>
“You didn't know that when you detonated. And if he tries to touch you, you can just blow him up. You'll be fine.”<br/><br/>
Gavin makes a surprisingly quiet noise of grudging acquiescence.<br/><br/>
And Michael leaves him. Michael would never tell Gavin this, it would only rile him up and scare him even more, but the prospect of doing what he is doing – leaving Gavin in that psycho's trap – has him anxious in spite of his cool façade for a number of reasons, not least of which is the issue with the Gavin’s respawn. If Gavin does detonate again, Michael has no idea where he'll end up. Either Geoff’s tether malfunctioned at the most inopportune time, or Ryan has found a way to circumvent it. One of those scenarios is far worse than the other, but neither is great.<br/><br/>
There isn't much time for him to worry. He's only been walking at a brisk pace for a little over five minutes when he's tackled to the ground by a flash of olive green and yellow. The weight and cold metal of heavy armor pressing him into the ground is a comfort. He has been fantasizing about having Geoff on top of him for months. It isn't everything he dreamed of, mostly because the armor is too thick to facilitate any tactility, and Ray and Jack – fucking Jack – are standing nearby, killing the moment, but Michael will count this as progress.<br/><br/>
“You little bitch!” Geoff yells, shaking Michael’s shoulders, slamming him against the ground a few times. “You think you can run from me!? I'm the best fucking hunter ever! Now where's my gold, asshole?”<br/><br/>
“You're never gonna believe what happened to us. I shit you not, a guy hung like a donkey in a skirt –“<br/><br/>
“Where's Gavin?” interrupts Ray.<br/><br/>
Geoff sits up, still straddling Michael. Oh, with less clothes and fewer people around this could be very nice. Or Ray and Jack could watch if that's what Geoff is into. Michael’s not too picky.<br/>
“Yeah, where is that little shit?”<br/><br/>
Michael pushes up to his elbows. “The guy in the skirt put him in a hole.”<br/><br/>
Jack laughs, “What?”<br/><br/>
“That's not a euphemism. Some dude put him in a hole.” Michael regretfully scrambles out from under Geoff and to his feet. “Here, I'll show you.” He leads them back through the brush and thick foliage, being careful to point out a few scattered bear traps along the way, recapping the tale.<br/><br/>
When he finishes, Jack is staring at him in complete disbelief, and Geoff just asks, “So my gold is gone?”<br/><br/>
“Well, I mean, Ryan – the hole guy – has half of it. You could use your amazing badass hunting skills to track him down and take it back. But the pieces that were in the hole with Gav are gone.”<br/><br/>
“Ryan the hole guy,” Jack muses with a chuckle. “I like that you asked what he put in holes, but not what holes he put those things in.”<br/><br/>
“I didn't wanna know, dude. Guy’s a freak. Shit, we’re here.” Michael scampers over to the edge of the hole and peers in to see Gavin sitting against the far wall with his knees drawn up to his chest. “Hey, Gavvy.”<br/><br/>
“Still there?” Ray asks from back by the tree.<br/><br/>
“I'm still here, X-Ray,” calls Gavin, looking up from his knees with a grin that diminishes when he sees that only Geoff, Jack, and Michael are at the lip of the hole. “Oh, it's you knobs,” he grumbles bitterly.<br/><br/>
“Nice way to greet your saviors, asshole,” Geoff sneers.<br/><br/>
“Yeah, you prick,” agrees Michael.<br/><br/>
“Get me out already!”<br/><br/>
“Not if you're gonna be a cunt, dude,” Geoff tuts.<br/><br/>
“<i>You’re being a cunt</i>!”<br/><br/>
Everyone breaks into a chorus of heckling for Gavin’s flaccid retort. Even Ray bellows a sarcastic, “Got ‘im!” as he slings a rope down to Gavin.<br/><br/>
“Where the hell'd you get that?” demands Michael.<br/><br/>
Ray lazily gestures at the rope trap tree from which Michael had dangled up until about twenty minutes ago. Ryan had left the rope trap, and Michael hadn't been industrious enough to consider using it. That's embarrassing.<br/><br/>
Ray and Jack collaborate to pull Gavin up – Jack can do it on his own, but Ray is insistent on helping – while Michael listens Geoff bicker with his SI unit, which insists that the respawn tether “just broke apropos of nothing. Nothing I could've done about it.”<br/><br/>
“But you can fix it?” asks Geoff.<br/><br/>
“Easily.”<br/><br/>
“What're we gonna do about Ryan, though?” Michael wants to know.<br/><br/>
Geoff gives him a puzzled look. “Who?”<br/><br/>
“Ryan, the monster schlong guy.”<br/><br/>
“Oh.” Geoff throws an arm around Michael’s shoulders, and he has to make an active effort not to melt into it. “I wouldn't worry about it. You said he scampered off into the forest. He sounds like a pussy. I bet we’ll never see his face around here again.”<br/><br/>
Michael sighs. They can only hope.</p>
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